Zendala Dare 12 at The Bright Owl

Erin provided us with another beautiful template for the zendala dare.  This one will be one of my favorites, because there’s a lot of open space, which allows a lot more (at least for me) latitude in choosing tangles.  Here is the first one I did.

The tangles I used were Ixorus and Fife.  The leaves I’m not sure what to call.  I know they are part of Ennies, but I’ve seen them alone so many times, and I’m sorry if it’s somebody’s tangle I’m not giving credit to.  The other two areas are filled with line work (Laura’s Auras?).  It’s drawn with Micron 01 pen, and shaded with a pencil and dots done with the Micron.

For the second one, I decided to add color.

 This one uses Drupe and Ennies, both official Zentangles, Coaster by Carole Ohl, Fern by Jane Monk, and Buttercup by Sandy Steen Bartholomew.  The leafy ivy was also “borrowed” from Sandy’s book: Totally Tangled.  The finished zendala was colored with Staedtler triplus fineliners, and Prismacolor Wax Pencils.

Both of these tiles were copied onto watercolor paper, so I used the lines in the template.  If I have time, now I’m going to do a graphite transfer and play some more.  I’ve totally fallen in love with Zendalas, and I’m planning on doing some coasters as Christmas gifts as soon as I figure out what to draw them on.  I’m wondering if anybody has ever done them on some very thick paper or cardboard, colored them and then laminate them and put cork on the back..  I know that will work with book marks, (without the cork)  but I’m not sure it would be sturdy enough to hold up as a coaster.

I hope you will let me know you were here; the comments make my day.  I would love to hear your thoughts.  To participate in these dares hop over Erin’s blog.  There’s a link on my blog roll.  Now I’m off to go look at the great art submitted by all the other artists.

Zendala Dare 11

I was a little afraid I wouldn’t make it this week, and I normally do two, but I’m going to post this one in case I don’t get a second one done.

Tangles, Beelines, Strircles, and Ahh plus a little line work.

When I started filling in this zendala I didn’t have a theme in mind, and I started at the outside and drew beelines.  I had just recently learned this tangle and absolutely loved the three dimensional look of it.  Next I looked at the smaller triangles, and thought they looked like airplanes, missiles, or rockets.  I outlined them, and then saw the little communication thingies that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock wore on their uniforms.  Yes, I know that dates me, but I still remember the Ed Sullivan Show, What’s My Line, and when TV was only on several hours a day, lol.  Once I completed that, I drew the Strircles to represent moons, or planets  in the Universe.  The last tangle was Ahh, because it reminds me of stars.

Actually a fairly simple one to do, and maybe I’ll have time to do another one.

To see more, click on the link on the right side, or go here.

If you stopped by, let me know; I love to read your comments.  Until next time, Happy Tangling.

Diva Challenge #76 – HOME

This week’s challenge from the Diva was to create a tile or ZIA using my “home” as inspiration.  It could be my country, my state, my home town, or even my  own backyard; I got to choose.  I chose Washington State where I live.  I live in Maple Valley, a fairly smallish town in the same county as Seattle, but to the east, in the foothills of the Cascade mountains.  My state has almost every kind of environment you could look for.  We have mountains, coast line on the Pacific Ocean, desert, islands, farm lands. orchards….except for arctic weather, we have most everything.  In my first ZIA, I tried to show most of that.  Here it is.

This ZIA was built on four tiles, traced in an overlapping fashion, and it has 15 different tangles on it, in an attempt to describe the beautiful state in which I live.  The only thing I think I left out is the mountains, because I couldn’t find a tangle to represent them.  Starting on the left, there is Verdigogh and Oke, representing all the gorgeous greenery in this state.  We are known as the “Evergreen State”, for very good reason: We have hundreds of thousands of acres of evergreen trees, both virgin forest and second and third generation replanting.  Also, Seattle, our largest city is known as the Emerald City.  Below  these two tangles is Msst morphing into Raindotty.  No description of Washington would be complete without tangles representing rain.  It rains a lot here; especially in Western Washington where I live; but as my Dad used to tell me: “most of the time it’s dry rain…you don’t get wet!”.  In the middle two tiles there is Squid, Cockles “n’ Mussels, River, Riverstones, and Nzeppel (the unstructured one).  These represent the water, fresh and ocean and sea life we have in our state, and the rocky terrain of the desert.  Also, there’s Shiraz, which signifies the wine country in eastern Washington, but also resembles clams, and Poke leaf and Inapod, beginning description of the agricultural center this state is.  On the right, it’s all about wine and flowers,  More Nzeppel, now structured, Rose (more wine, but also flowery, and they are both surrounded by Buttercup, a lovely tangle that represents gorgeous flowers.  Our state flower is Rhododendron, but since I don’t know how to “tangle” that, I used Buttercup.  This ZIA took some time to do, but I enjoyed every Zen moment of it.

Not only that, but while I was doing it, ideas started to flow….I had to jot them down so I didn’t forget.  I finally settled on a “map” of Washington for my second tile.  Here it is:

First I traced the map, then I used a 2.5″ square template to add some “strings”.  I decided not to try to tangle the whole state, because the challenge would have been long over before I finished it!  The finished size of this ZIA is approximately 7″ x 9″.  The tangles that appear in this are (in no apparent order) Blooming Butter, Chugh, Tipples, Auras, Pokeleaf, Pokeroot, Verdigogh, Geers #one and #3, Chard, Zin, Gewurtz, Rose’, Cockles ‘n’ Mussels, River, Riverstones, Msst, Raindotty, Rain, Crescent Moon, and Cat-Kin.  Oh, yeah, there’s also a variation of Night Bridge, which is in here for no other reason than I oopsed on part of Chard, and had to “fix” it.  Actually, there are several oopses, not to be confused with  “mistakes”, lol.

A few more facts about Washington.  We have industry, and are famous for Boeing Airplanes, Starbucks Coffee, Microsoft, and Weyerhouser Lumber Company.  We also have a large tourist industry, including hunting, fishing, skiing, and water sports. Industry is represented on the map by use of some of Sandra Strait’s “geers”.  The heavy white line running east and west through the state represents Interstate 90, the longest interstate in the United States, which begins in Seattle on the west coast and runs straight through to Boston, Massachusetts, going through about 13 states.  We have two beautiful mountain ranges, the Olympics on the western peninsula, and the Cascade Mountain range which runs west to east and then north.  Our three most famous mountains are Mt. Rainier, Mount Baker (both of which have lots of skiing in the winter, and Mt. St. Helen, which you may have heard “blew her top” some years ago.  We have hundreds of lakes, rivers and streams, and a large number of fishermen.  There is no place on earth I would rather live than right where I am.  I count it a blessing that my parents moved us here when I was an adolescent from southern California, a nice place to visit.

One last fact:  Washington is bordered to the north by British Columbia, Canada, to the east by Idaho, and to the south by Oregon, separated in part by the Columbia River.

I hope you are enjoying this challenge as much as I did.  It’s so nice to find out where some of my cyber friends call home.  I surely welcome your comments, and until next time, Happy Tangling!

Diva Challenge #75

This week’s challenge was Tanglation-Nation:  Cadent.  We were to use the gorgeous cadent tangle and come up with variations.  I love this tangle.  It looks so beautiful and difficult, and it’s not hard at all.  These are the two I came up with.

The first one is tile sized and a frame of cadent for the Urchin tangle in the center.  The second one is a larger ZIA.  I traced a tile three times, overlapping, and then drew different variations of cadent in different sizes in the strings that resulted.  As you can see, I didn’t play much with the shape of cadent, just the size and the filler.  It was still fun to do, and I like the three-dimensional look of it.  As always, the Diva gave us another wonderful challenge.  To see more, click on the  Diva weekly challenge widget on the right side bar.  Time to go look at all the wonderful art.  Until next time, Happy Tangling.

Diva Challenge #74 – “String Theory v. X: Eccentric Circles”

This week’s Diva Challenge was to use strings that were eccentric circles.  She gives a definition on her blog;  but basically, they aren’t totally round and/or don’t share the same epicenter, so they are not concentric.    The best thing about these challenges is how it “challenges” us to think outside the box, and how it sparks our creativity.  Thank you, Diva!  More about that later. First here are my entries:

Tangles: Buttercup, Brayd, Purk, Box Spirals, Beeline, Barber Poles, Dex (with an oops) Tipple

This was my first one, and it has a lot of tangles in it, and I sort of used the Diva’s string to start.  But to be honest, when I finished I wasn’t all that happy with it.  I thought it was way too busy, and I couldn’t even tell where any of my string was when I started.  It’s not that I don’t like it, but it sure didn’t turn out the way I intended.  However, since there are no “mistakes” in zentangle, I decided to post it.

The next photo is of the next page in my art journal, where I tried again.

I liked these better, not so busy, and I could see my string.  The one on the left was supposed to be a unitangle of Strircles, but by the time I finished, it looked like I had added a little bit of Crescent Moon and maybe Striping. On the one on the right, there’s Onomato, Striping, a Hollibaugh variation with auras, Reticulated, and another one on the lower right which I don’t know the name of, but have seen something similar.  That one was really fun, because I wasn’t really thinking about what to do next, just drawing without looking anything up.  Really relaxing.

Now I want to talk about what I think is the really best part of these challenges…..stretching your creativity.  While I was working on the second drawing, I kept thinking of Saturn and it’s rings.  It didn’t really fit the challenge, so I tried hard not to think about it, but the thoughts wouldn’t go away.  So, I finally took a pause on the challenge, and drew this:

I  used a coffee cup to make the center circle, then drew the rings.  I know Saturn has more rings, and they aren’t so wide, so I’ll call this Zen-Saturn.  Only has four tangles, that cool 3D Beeline, Hollibaugh, Onomato, and Striping.  Really fun to do, because once the circle was drawn and the rings sketched (strings), NO THINKING!  Again, though, it spurred my creative juices.  Beeline really resembles a quilt pattern I’ve done called “Baby Blocks”.  It’s also an optical illusion if you piece all the blocks together side by side and in rows.  It’s made of a square, and two parallelograms. I found my pattern to get the approximate dimensions, and I’m going to make a baby card.  It’s not finished, but here’s the start:

I’ll finish it on vacation.  We leave tomorrow for six glorious days high up in the mountains at a lake resort for fishing, relaxing, and visiting with family.   Our whole extended family goes, four generations, six cabins full, and we have a blast!  We’ve been doing it annually for 40 years.

So now I’m off to look at many entries as I have time for tonight; and I’ll be back next Wednesday, by which time a new challenge will already have been up for several days!  The one thing we don’t have at the cabin is cell reception or wi-fi.  (That’s supposed to be a good thing.) We do have satellite TV though, so we can watch the US Open.

Thanks for stopping by, and if you leave a comment, thanks in advance. I’ll be eager to read them when I get back.  Until next time, happy tangling.

Zendala Dare #9 – The Bright Owl

Hey, guys, I finally got some help on how to do links and stuff, so there’s a link to the bright owl on the right side, if you want to join in on all the fun.  This is the ninth dare, and I had a blast with it.  It’s funny how I take a look at the template, wonder what the heck I’m going to do with it, start drawing, and something magical starts to happen, as the ink flows.  Here are the two I like the best first.

Tangles: Hollibaugh variation, Betweed, Onomato, and some little guys from Sandy Bartholomew’s Totally Tangled (don’t know their names) done in brown.

Tangles: Ennies, Becki (I think) by Sandy Bartholomew, and sort of caterpillar in the center. Border comes from Totally Tangled.

And here’s the first one I did, both colored and uncolored versions.

I decided I liked the ones with circle shape better, but this one was fun too.  It uses an Eyelet and ribbon variation, In Bloom, Urchins and Caterpillar and some more tangles from Totally Tangled.  Sandy puts some pictures of small tangles up called Dingbat Heaven, but doesn’t name each one.  It’s really a fun book.

Until next time, Let’s Tangle!

I Am the Diva Challenge #73 – UMT – Bridgen

It’s that time of the week again.  This week the Diva has challenged us to use a tangle created by “Carole Ohl’s partner in crime, Daved”.  It is called Bridgen, and is a versatile tangle.  To see other entries and find out more about how to join in the fun of these challenges go to the Diva’s web site, located here.  While you are there, leave some love for the talented artists.

Before I start, I want to give a big thank you to each of you who have commented on my previous challenges.  I normally don’t make a comment on the post to say thanks, because I figure once you’ve been there, you won’t go back, lol.  But I truly do love and appreciate the comments.  I’ve only been tangling since April 2 of this year, and the amount of encouragement I have received from the community is truly wonderful.  I’ve signed up for the CZT class in September, and I can hardly wait!  I believe that tangling will be a part of my life for whatever is left of it.

On to this week’s challenge.  When I first started to draw this tangle, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it.  I think I was having a fog moment, where I couldn’t think of what to do with it.  So I just drew the dots and connected them and started drawing.  By the time I finished it, I had so many ideas, I knew I couldn’t do them all.  I ended up with five of them, and I’m going to show them in the order they were drawn.

Here is the first one.

Tangles: Bridgen, Lily Pads, Inapod, Nipa, Dew Drops, and Ahh

On the first four, Bridgen is primarily the string.  On this one I chose to tangle my name, which determined which tangles I used.  I liked it better than I thought I was going to.

Then, I decided to do a ZIA on a larger piece of paper, and I thought I’d increase the size of the Bridgen lines so I could tangle inside the tangle as well as the blank spaces it created.  Here it is:

As you can see, I used a bunch of tangles on this one, and got to practice shading.  I don’t even remember all the small tangles I put into the string and I forgot to write them down, but the bigger ones are cadent, florz, hollibaugh, and puf.

So, next I thought; hmm, what would happen if you drew Bridgen in a grid shape (kind of like you draw cadent) and then tangled inside each of the grid shapes.  That resulted in this:

Tangles: Bridgen, Laced, Intersection, Nipa, Dew Drops, Ahh

That’s my name again, but it would also be a cute way to make your own sample tile, with 16 different tangles in it.  However, I gotta tell you, it’s not as easy to tangle in that small a space as a bigger one.

Since I was focused on using Bridgen as a string and also tangling my name, I thought what if I drew block letters and tangled Bridgen around the letters and filled them with something else.  So I drew my initials and filled them with a variation of Striping.  Striping was so bold, that I didn’t like the way the Bridgen looked, so I just filled it in, including the circles, and then added white paint pen to the circles to highlight them.

Oops, looks like I need to clean the glass on my scanner.  Oh, well.

And finally, a total departure from what I had been doing (in a way).  This is a 5″ x 8″ ZIA, with some hand drawn maple leaves, deconstructed OKE, where I drew just a portion of the tangles, and outlining some of the bigger leaves in Bridgen, and a couple of smaller ones with Beadlines.  The whole thing is then colored with Prisma Pencils and Distress Inks.

I think I’m finally done with this Challenge and can go give love to all the artists and then move on to something else.  Thanks for stopping by, and until next time,  Let’s Tangle!

Zendala Dare #8 L-O-V-E

For information on how to enter this challenge, go here.  While you are there, be sure to leave some love for all the gorgeous art work displayed.

For this week Erin asked us to use her zendala drawing to spell out the word L-O-V_E; using only tangles that began with those four letters.  This kind of challenge forces us to “think” a bit, and plan a little before we start.  You can’t just start with one tangle, and then put whatever you think would look good with it next.  It’s fun for a change to do something different.  The only other time I did this was when I tangled my name.  That was so much fun I did it three times, each different.  For this challenge I did two.  Here’s the first one>

For this zendala I used Linked around the outside, Onomato, Vache, and Efilys.  I had never drawn Vache before and think it’s lovely, with so many opportunities for variations.  I thought of Linked first, because in my mind I could see two lives linked together in Love.

Here’s the second one I drew.  It is drawn in purple Micron 01 pen.

This one uses Lotsadots, Opus, Vortex, and a variation of Embellish.  The story I told myself about this one is that in the vortex of life,  our lives and work are embellished best with Love.

Hope you like them, and will leave me a note letting me know you were here.  Now I’m off to thebrightowl.com to leave comments for all the artists who participated.  Until next time, Let’s Tangle.